


infinite creation at your fingertips

by arysthaeniru



Series: restless sleep (dream a little longer) [2]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:31:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3636813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysthaeniru/pseuds/arysthaeniru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just one touch of endless inspiration, and she is hooked forever. Yanagi could not think of a better fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	infinite creation at your fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> Set before [submerged in your dreams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3443528). Yanagi's Induction.

Turning her head minusculely to acknowledge the subtle gesture made in her direction by the professor, Yanagi quickly made her way down the lecture hall stairs, until she was in front of his desk. “Yanagi,” said the architecture professor, in his accented english, “Have you got another class to go to?”

Yanagi tilted her head to the left, slightly. Why was her french architecture professor making the effort to speak to her in english, when he was fully aware that she spoke french fluently, after her frequent contributions during class? “No sir.” she replied, in kind, her eyes flickering over to the edge of the room where a young man with a pale face and beautiful blue-black hair edged in.

"Ah, well then, I’d like to introduce you to someone who is well renowned in the world of _architecture_ —” Odd, there was a strange inflection to that word compared to the rest of his dull monotone english, “—Yukimura Seiichi. Yukimura, this is my brightest student, as you asked for. She’s seventeen, but already in her second year at the Sorbonne, despite coming from America!” said the professor, jovially. Despite the cheer in his voice, he looked rather resigned and there was a slight sheen on his forehead that wasn’t usually present during lectures. Hm.

Yanagi turned to the young man, who was looking at her with a politely interested look. Still, his eyes spoke a different story, as he practically raked over her face and the way her hands curled around her large architecture textbook. The gaze was distracting from Yanagi’s own assessment of him, but she strived on, nevertheless. He was rich, that much was clear from the way he dressed in casual designer clothing, and he was someone used to that richness as well, from the confidence in his stance. American or English-speaking by the way that the professor had switched to English, and not a man who seemed to be a typical architect. She saw little of the calluses or posture that accompanied long days hunched over a blueprint.

Instead, she saw the sort of hands that worked long and hard on something physical. A builder then? But why was he renowned in the architecture field if he was just a builder? The evidence she was getting for all of this was very contradictory and Yanagi waited for further data to proceed her analysis of him.

"Enchanté, Madamemoiselle." said Yukimura, in smooth french, as he pressed a kiss to her knuckles without any sense of embarrassment. Used to that sort of greeting, definitely not an ordinary builder. It supported the rich theory. "You needn’t use English with me, professor, I speak french quite well." he said, with a light smile, a smile that only seemed to further the professor’s increasingly obvious discomfort.

"Ahh, that’s that. Yanagi, Monsieur Yukimura has a proposal for you that I’m not allowed to be around to hear. Plausible deniability, you understand. And remember Yukimura, she’s seventeen. If yet another talented architect is lost forever…" he warned, as he hurriedly gathered his stuff, almost knocking over the Newton’s Cradle on the desk.

"Don’t worry. That world has changed since you were last in it, professor." said Yukimura, and this time his smile felt vaguely threatening. Sensing it, the professor practically bolted from the lecture hall, until the two of them were left alone in the large, echoing lecture hall. "Hmm.” commented Yukimura, as he glanced around the decorated dome, "It’s a little draughty here, don’t you think? Would you like to head elsewhere?"

Yanagi didn’t move from her spot, planted to the step in front of the professor’s desk. “You are involved in some sort of crime.” she accused and Yukimura neither confirmed nor denied it with his body language, just quirked an eyebrow, in amusement.

"That isn’t a conversation for a place like this. But rest assured, you have every option to say no, and if you do, nothing will be held against you. I merely want to offer you a proposal." said Yukimura, and his smile was charmingly interesting. Yanagi swallowed minutely, as she looked over his figure. Did she indulge her curiosity and perhaps endanger her safety or did she walk away to try and finish her degree without trouble?

The choice was obvious.

"Very well." Yanagi said, as she stepped of the platform and strolled out of the room, not waiting for Yukimura to follow her. In less than five minutes, they found themselves out on one of the top-floor balconies, looking out over the Paris skyscape. Yukimura leant back against the railing, and let his hair stream behind him neatly, more neatly than even Yanagi’s could, despite her own being ramrod-straight. He had the appearance of someone who was too beautiful and bizarre to completely fit in this world, even if that was more poetic a term than Yanagi really wanted to apply in analysis of people.

"There’s a certain test I want to give you before I tell you any more details, to see if you really are that good, or whether they’re just exaggerating." Yukimura said, just as Yanagi was about to break the silence between them. "Open your textbook to page 873." he ordered, and despite herself, Yanagi was intrigued.

Flipping the page open, she saw the preliminary stages to a large glass building, built for the express purpose of conserving energy. “If money and resources wasn’t a problem for you, design me a 100% energy efficient building from that design in five minutes. The drawing doesn’t have to be beautiful, just functional.” said Yukimura, lazily and Yanagi felt her heart speed up rapidly.

That was…nearly impossible. He was asking the impossible. But saying that aloud wouldn’t be greeted well, she could tell that from the curve of his shoulders, and so instead, Yanagi placed her pencil right to the pages in the textbook and started improving, not bothering to get any new paper and waste precious seconds on something like that. Writing on the book hurt, but not as much as failing this test and having her curiosity forever piqued, would.

In what seemed like no time at all, Yukimura called ‘Time’, in a crisp voice and with a heavy heart, Yanagi handed over her design. Yukimura took a couple of minutes to analyse it, and even though his expression hadn’t changed, something about the set of his face was brighter. Yanagi knew that she’d passed the test and she coolly inclined her head upwards to look down at the shorter man.

Yukimura handed the textbook back to her, and Yanagi’s fingers brushed against his calluses. They definitely weren’t the hands of an architect, who drew all day. But yet, he’d understood her design and the markings with ease. “Page 476. Three minutes. If that building was in zero gravity, and there needed to be a delivery made from the first floor to the penthouse in less than a minute, how would you do it? Go.”

But Yanagi didn’t need the time, as she glanced at the building design, quickly. “That’s more than easy. Add momentum to a system with none by a collision aimed up the lift shaft, and the delivery will reach the top. If the collision occurs with enough speed, it will go to the top without even slowing down because the acceleration of the object would be 0.”

Yukimura smirked. “I didn’t say that there wasn’t air. All normal earth conditions, except without gravitational acceleration. And it needs to be more specific than just a collision, an apple thrown at the delivery load with enough speed isn’t going to make it rise. And that’s thirty seconds gone.”

Yanagi stared at Yukimura for a precious few seconds. What. But that couldn’t exist. What was he asking from her? This was beyond any concept she’d come across yet in her education, and her blood thrummed underneath her skin, with the tight nervous energy of meeting a challenge that could potentially defeat her. Then, she grabbed the book and started scrawling equations across the side of the sheet, and drawing various explosive loads that could push it up. He hadn’t mentioned whether it was for multiple use or not, so she was going to just design a single use, that was much easier.

In what was far too short a time period, Yanagi heard him call ‘Time’ again, and she handed him the unfinished barebones of the project with far too few defined variables and too many unknowns. Still, he chuckled softly, upon seeing the crude mechanism she’d drawn on the side. “I suppose that would work.” he said, as she carefully shut the book. “Next time, demand specifications when you are not given enough. It is always better to be told no, than to ruin a project because you didn’t ask for enough detail.”

"Yes sir." said Yanagi, as she tucked the book into her bag and stared at him. Architect and not. Criminal and not. Just what was he, anyway, to make her blood pound in her veins like this, to make her feel inadequate for one of the first times in her life?

"Imagine a world without limits." said Yukimura softly. "No rules apply, except what you imagine. Only your own creativity to buoy along the stream of life. It can’t exist, right?"

Yanagi shook her head. “They say that when someone is in a coma—”

Yukimura raised a hand, laughing softly, with just a tinge of surprise to his eyes. Yanagi felt pleased at that. “You’re bright. The world I’m talking about is dreamspace. But I think, it needs to be further explained elsewhere, yes?”

(x)

"Dreamspace is unlimited potential, yes." Yanagi said, carefully, as she took a sip from the coffee cup. The bitter taste warmed her belly, as she stared back at Yukimura, whose gaze was unreadable and direct. "But what does that have to do with architecture? You cannot decide how your dream works, after all, unless you are a lucid dreamer. Even then…you cannot design things there."

Yukimura just smirked softly. “It’s true, but only to an extent. After all, when you create normal architecture, you design every aspect of it, no? In dreams however, you just see parts of it, and the rest of it fills itself in, for you. Like it’s creating itself.”

Yanagi nodded. That was an uneasily accurate way of describing the long, windy dreams of her nightly voyages, places and shapes that flowed perfectly into each other, even if they didn’t match up with what she had previously seen.

"Dream are places of true inspiration." said Yukimura, his lips lingering on the phrase. "Not like real life, a pale imitation of that. In real life, our brain attempts to fill in missing details to an extent—that is why a paradox can function, after all. But in dreams, the creation constantly happens. We perceive the world and create the world, simultaneously. It’s evidently flawed."

Yanagi just snorted softly and Yukimura returned the wry smile, as he took a sip from his cup as well, with a dainty ease. Rich. “Yanagi-san, you said previously that you cannot design things will in dreamspace. That’s true, it’s difficult to do that, but for different reasons to the ones you’re currently imagining. But why do you need to design the buildings in the dream? Design them outside of the dream and apply them inside it, to create a world without limits, but completely controlled by you, rather than your brain’s automatic filter.” Yukimura said, his voice lilting and passionate about it.

Yanagi paused and inhaled. True freedom and creativity to do what she wanted. It was easy to break fundamental rules of existence in a dream world, after all. The buildings you could create…

"But how do you apply the constructed buildings to your dreams?" asked Yanagi, frowning, softly. "And how would you even manage to achieve the level of detail required to truly build something and experience it?"

Yukimura smirked softly and leant back in his chair, his gaze drifting upwards towards the canopy under which they were sitting. “Think about how you feel during a dream. It feels real when you are in a dream, because your brain is constantly feeding you the illusion that it is completely real. It’s only when you wake up that you realize that something was bizarre about it. You’d use that same principle in the created dream. You make the barebones of it, the important parts of it, and fill it with a subconscious, either yours, or that of another, to fill in the details.”

Yanagi gave Yukimura a skeptical look and Yukimura spread his hands out. “Think about it carefully for me, Yanagi-san. When you have dreams, you don’t really remember the beginning of a dream, do you?” When Yanagi shook her head, Yukimura’s satisfied grin only grew larger and Yanagi clutched the edge of her chair slightly, in anticipation. “Tell me Yanagi-san, exactly how did we end up at this cafe? Do you even know where this cafe is?”

Yanagi stared up at the sign and looked around her. There were people crossing the road, cheerfully, old men walking around with shopping bags, and young women cycling away, with their skirts tucked underneath them. There were other people eating at the tables next to them, and they were making typical conversation, what Yanagi would expect. The sky was blue and she could feel the sun on her skin, through the cloth. This had to be real, didn’t it? But yet, despite Yanagi’s almost perfect recall, she couldn’t remember where this was or how they’d gotten here.

"We’re dreaming?" asked Yanagi, her eyes opening with disbelief, and in response, the entire street turned a vibrant, garish shade of green, and every single person in their near vicinity exploded into piles of blood and gore. Not a single splatter of blood fell on Yukimura or Yanagi.

Yukimura’s eyes met Yanagi’s directly, not seeming in the slightest concerned by what had happened to their surroundings. The people around them, who hadn’t exploded, seemed content to ignore the bloodbags that had once been people. Yanagi’s eyes fell down to their corpses, finally ripping her gaze away from Yukimura’s, so she could take in the extent of the destruction he’d just caused without even blinking. The world started shaking, and slowly, the things around them exploded, one by one by one, without seeming to ever come close to them, before one large chunk of glass cam—

(x)

Yanagi woke with a start, and stared at her hands. There was an IV linked to it, that a tall, broad man was gently removing from her wrist. He handed her a small towel and a bandaid, with a nod. Feeling a little concerned and speechless from what had just happened, Yanagi glanced around her, to check her surroundings. They seemed to be in a large workshop area, that seemed to dwarf the four inhabitants of the room. She remembered where she had come from now, at least. She had been having the lesson with the Professor, then Yukimura had shown up, tested her on the roof of the school, then they had walked here, with Yukimura asking small-talk about her school-life and how she enjoyed France compared to America. She wasn’t dreaming, not now.

There was the sound of movement, and Yanagi turned to look at where Yukimura was taping his wrist, and shrugging off the younger child, with a head full of wild, curly hair, who seemed to be helping him, .

"You ducked away from the glass…" murmured Yanagi, as she attempted to gather her breath and analyse her surroundings properly. They hadn’t really stopped to talk to the other two inhabitants of the room, Yukimura had just plugged her straight into the dream. She should analyse them now, but her head was still spinning a little and she could still recall the stark details of the bags of flesh exploding…

"Injuries still hurt in the dream." Yukimura said, quietly, pulling her away from that vision with his voice, "And death in the dream means waking up in real life."

Yanagi nodded, attempting to keep that in mind, instead of the other panicked thoughts that seemed to encroach upon her. “So, you said that this wasn’t legal, but I can’t see why not. This seems like hi-tech material, but not necessary evil…”

"Humans can make everything about crime." said the man who’d helped her, gravely, as he tucked some silver machine away, into a sealed box, his movements crisp and deliberate. "In this case, most criminals use dream-sharing in order to extract information from another’s subconscious, and sell it to someone who wants it. This can ruin their life, but the pay is beyond imagination."

Yanagi glanced over the two adults in the room. Yukimura and this mysterious man were both very well-dressed and used to wealth. She didn’t doubt that part of the statement, nor the part about crime. “So you want me to design a world for you to be able to steal information from people’s minds?” she asked, quietly.

"Yes, every now and then. And in return, you can use the PASIV when you’d like, in order to experience true creativity, without any restraints, as well as gain a cut of the money from any extraction jobs. You would just have to use the PASIV here, and not move it from this location." Yukimura said, softly, his smile promising things that made Yanagi’s heart beat faster and her skin feel clammy. Sheer possibility and creativity.

What person would give that up for moral relativity? But still…she had to think about her education at the Sorbonne. She was here on a very special scholarship, because of her young age. She had to be careful. “I…I have to think about it. Can I contact you in again in a day or two?” she asked, shakily, as she staggered up to her feet. The child was at her side, instantly, though now he wasn’t kneeling, he looked a lot more like an adolescent.

"Of course." said the taller man, handing her a small black card, cutting off whatever Yukimura was about to say. The two men looked at each other for a long time, during which, Yanagi froze to watch them, before Yukimura slowly nodded. With a nod, Yanagi grabbed her bag and headed out the door. On her way out, she heard Yukimura mutter, quietly: "She’ll be back. Just you wait."

(x)

Even though Yanagi resolved to not think about the dream-world too much, designs for a world without pesky things like air resistance or feasibly resources kept being doodled into the sides of her textbooks and classwork assignments. Her mind kept replaying the explosions of the people, and trying to remind her that this was possibly a bad idea, but then, she thought of the way that Yukimura had made every building explode, into fine, tiny segments and the challenges he’d given her.

And she knew that from the moment that Yukimura had walked into the lecture hall, her fate had been sealed.

The black card had not contained any names, just a telephone number and an address, which when placed into google maps, showed the warehouse that she’d woke up in after her first dreaming experience. Dream-sharing…she was sure that it was worth it, but she wondered what her parents would think about her committing crimes in her spare time, just so she could design and test new buildings.

Still, she didn’t linger on that realization too much. What her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, and she was responsible enough to balance all of her schoolwork and this well. With that resolution, Yanagi returned to the warehouse in three days time, texting ahead in time, just to make sure that someone would be there. The walk was long, and she resolved to get the bus next time, so she could spare her feet.

"Hello?" she called, as she pushed open the door. The curly-black-haired kid and the tall black-haired man turned around from where they seemed to be working on something on the table, with the teen quickly moved to cover, before they both seemed to register who was there.

"Ahh, Yanagi-san." said the tall man, as he wiped his slightly greasy hands on his jeans and reached forward for a firm handshake. It looked natural, but his english was slightly accented with an asian tone, and he had called her Yanagi-san. Japanese, for sure; probably from Japan itself, not just of japanese descent, like herself. He held himself tall and with confidence in his stance. Fairly old then, and his state of dress in formal clothing added to the theory of being rich for a long time. 

"Hi." said the kid, with a short nod and a slightly suspicious look, as he moved away from the table for a bit, so Yanagi could vaguely see parts of guns scattered everywhere, along with some tools. He looked asian as well, but his accent sounded typically american and his black curls indicated that he maybe had some sort of other ancestry. He had a rather prominent slouch, and his shoulders had hunched in more upon seeing her. It could be attributed to typical teenaged behaviour, but it seemed a lot more like he was out to protect himself from something else. Hmm. Something troublesome in his past?

"Hello again." said Yanagi, bowing to the tall man and reaching out her hand to the kid. The kid took it, with a little hesitance and his grip was equally firm. Not too scarred by his past, just reticent because of it. "I wanted to accept your offer. Is there a contract to sign?"

The tall man nodded, looking marginally less serious. “Yukimura has it, but he’s currently elsewhere, so we can sort out those details once he returns. While you’re here, would you like to try another dream world? I’d like to teach you some of the basics of dream-sharing in general.”

"Of course." Yanagi said, pausing slightly at the end, where she would usually insert a name, and the kid laughed from where he was leaning against the table, fiddling with a screwdriver and a bolt.

"The ol’man’s called Sanada. I’m Akaya." he introduced, with a lazy wave. "Sorry. Manners sorta get shoved out of the way when you’re in this business."

Yanagi nodded, towards Akaya. Akaya was a japanese first name, but the fact that he’d given her his first name definitely made it seem like he’d grown up in America. Hmm, and then Sanada was a famous japanese last name. It had to be an alias. “Thank you.” she said, quietly, placing her bag by the table and rolling up her sleeves.

"Akaya, get the PASIV." said Sanada, as he researched through a small bag for the wipe to rub over skin to make fit easier for the drip to fit into the skin. "Give us five minutes."

"Five minutes?" asked Yanagi, curiously. That seemed like a short amount of time for any sort of lesson.

"Time works differently in the dream world." explained Sanada as Akaya brought him the silver box, which he opened and started to press buttons and dialed numbers into. "Have you ever had a dream where it feel like you have spent days or even weeks dreaming, but when you wake up, it has only been a few hours?" he asked, looking up, briefly.

Yanagi nodded in response and Sanada grunted. “In REM, your brain functions faster and using somnacin, our brains work at an even faster rate that that. One hour in the dream world translates to five minutes here. It’s important to not use the PASIV for too long in one go, because of the use of somnacin. Otherwise, you can get addicted.” he said, as he handed her the wire.

Akaya grabbed the wire, and in a swift motion, jabbed the IV into her wrist, making Yanagi wince slightly. “Lie back.” said Akaya, almost cheerfully, pushing the two lounger chairs closer together. Yanagi leant back against the couch and let the wheezing hydraulics of the PASIV lull her away to sleep.

She found herself walking through a forest, and brushing past trees and vines, that extended ever higher and higher, but yet, despite that, she could still feel the sun on her skin. Suddenly, Sanada was at her side, and it didn’t feel all too weird, though a part of her commented that people weren’t supposed to appear from nowhere.

"It’s beautiful." she breathed out, as she brushed a hand against one of the trees. It felt real underneath her fingers.

"Currently, we are inside your dream, this is the landscape you designed unconsciously. But this dream is filled with my subconscious." Sanada explained, his hands in his pockets, as he watched her glance around, with a fond, almost paternal look. He couldn’t be that much older than her, could he? There were lines to his face and he looked very serious, but he didn’t have grey hair and there was something about his stance that made him seem younger than he looked and acted. "That decision is made by the order in which the PASIV drops you into the dream and can be decided beforehand. Akaya can show you that, that’s the easiest part."

Yanagi nodded, as she looked up at the distant sky. She could smell the petrichor in the air and the pollen of the blossoming trees ahead of her. She was quickly realizing that it was all about the senses, not just the visuals. When you woke up from a dream, all you could really remember were visuals, but of course, being inside a dream, you could experience everything. That was something to remember, if she was to be a good architect. All of the senses and details had to be realistic. “And if I am the dreamer, that means that I can alter the dream?”

Sanada nodded and looked set to say something, but Yanagi had already reached upwards towards the leaves, which all shook together and fell away, revealing a huge shining metropolis, filled with buildings, flouting in the clouds above them. One tree started unfolding into a large escalator and Yanagi strode towards it, not waiting for the transformation process to finish. Sanada followed her, his face slightly surprised as he glanced around.

"Sorry, you were saying?" she asked, as the tree suddenly sped up and pushed them up towards the metropolis with high speed. She almost fell back against Sanada, and he steadied her, as they were deposited off in a city that looked like it should have come from one of the American comic books that were always stacked in front of her university’s book store. This was even better than she could have thought up—except she was the one to have thought this up. And that realization was amazing. 

"Do you notice anything strange about this scene?" asked Sanada, gravely, as he glanced down at her, with an impassive look, his initial shock evidently gone.

Yanagi glanced around the busy city, with a frown, before it came to her. “Why are all of the people looking at me?” she asked, staring back at the faces of the people wearing futuristic clothing and hairstyles, whose eyes couldn’t quite seem to leave the duo. Still, she had the unnerving sensation of them looking solely at her, not at Sanada. 

"They are projections of my subconscious. I am not the only manifestation of my subconscious in the dream. People I’ve seen, people I’ve met, they’re all here, and you can talk to all of them. It’s one of the way that extractors collect information. Talking to these projections would get you information about me." said Sanada, easily, as he walked past one of the projections that gave them a nasty glare.

"So they’re supposed to stare at you?" asked Yanagi, feeling the back of her neck crawl from the accumulated gazes. That would be a serious dampener on shared dreams. To protect herself a little, if only by a little, she conjured a large trench coat from nowhere and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"No." Sanada said, as one projection gave Yanagi a particular stink-eye. "They don’t like changes to the universe you’ve created. If you set up one particular set of rules, and then suddenly change it, the subconscious gets uneasy, and starts to notice that perhaps, it isn’t dreaming alone. At that point, it’s major target is to locate and exterminate the intruder."

"Exterminate?" asked Yanagi, pausing in the act of turning the roads of the city into pure glass, so you could look down at the forest below their feet. That didn’t sound like something ideal.

Now the projections seemed rather ansty, actively shoving into them, as Yanagi crossed the street and Sanada followed. “Exterminate?” asked Yanagi again, staring at the back of a particularly tall old woman, with a large fur hat, who’d almost sent her sprawling.

"They’ll kill you and send you out of the dream." Sanada said, holding out a strong hand to pull Yanagi up, off the glass floor. Yanagi brushed down her trousers and glanced down at the long way to fall. Logically she knew the ground was still below her, but the visuals of it all, still created the illusion of being in the middle of falling. Combined with the chilly temperature and the swift breeze from being so elevated, she felt very uneasy, no matter how beautiful this metropolis was. "It doesn’t harm your real body, but you’ll feel some phantom pain when you wake up." Sanada finished, his hand lingering in hers as Yanagi shivered slightly. 

"That’s…unfortunate." she said, uneasily.

"Not always." said Sanada, inclining that she lead the way through the dream. "An aggressive subconscious was the very reason that PASIV technology was developed to this point, after all."

Aggressiv— “The military developed PASIV technology?” asked Yanagi, with a surprised look.

Sanada smiled a little at that. It was a look that suited his chiseled features. “The military always creates new technology first, and when they decide that it’s either obsolete or not destructive enough, it will be passed down to the masses. It was that way wit—”

"GPS and the internet, yes." Yanagi said, glancing around at the sudden influx in people walking around them. Was that supposed to happen? "I can see how it would be useful. You could train soldiers to fight well here."

"There were problems, as with all things." Sanada said, as they walked past, him gently brushing aside some people so they could make it through. "Soldiers started having trouble telling the difference between dreams and reality. They were able to die so easily in a dream and not have it affect them adversely. The pain even started to fade after enough practice. Once they were deployed, they walked out into the field, and since they were too accustomed to dying in the dream, the soldiers just died." Yanagi’s eyes flickered open at that and Sanada’s face were deeply sad. "That experiment was concluded as a failure and the military that only Special Ops would be allowed to deal with the PASIV, after extensive mental training."

Yanagi nodded, feeling a little shaken at that. Well, that was a strict warning against the dangers of losing yourself in the dream world.

"Criminals then took over the major usage of the PASIV. Around the world, the underground makes good use of it, as do major corporate heads. Practically every CEO or chairman of an established company has been trained to keep out extractors." Sanada explained, quietly, as they reached the edge of a cloud. Yanagi, glancing back towards the city of people ready to kill her for disturbing the dream, carefully constructed a bridge out of clouds, and cautiously stepped on one. They held steady and she started hopping from cloud to cloud, heading towards the next metropolis in the distance.

"So you don’t target people who’ve been trained?" asked Yanagi, as they hopped between clouds, Sanada keeping pace at her side, seemingly effortlessly.

"If an employer asks with enough money, you’ll do jobs on anyone. It just means you need to be better trained and need to have experience fighting projections." explained Sanada, as they drew closer to the next cloud city, where a crowd of unhappy people seemed to be waiting. “But we’re the best, so that’s rarely a problem.”

Yanagi’s face paled a little, that gathering of angry projections wasn’t good. “So it’s possible to fight them.” she said, conjuring up a knife in her hand, feeling her hand tremble a little at the weight of it. Projection or not, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stab somebody. Not with the images of exactly how human blood and gore looked like, crawling under her skin, like a festering, restless parasite.

"Yes. But at this point, when you’ve already alerted my subconscious to the fact that this is a dream run by someone else, it’s better to just die than outrun them." said Sanada, grimly. "We can work on teaching you to outwit the projections later."

With a nod, Yanagi made the knife vanish from her hand. “But I’d rather not be ripped apart by them…” she murmured.

"Just let the cloud drop us, that should wake us up." said Sanada and Yanagi did just that. The feeling of her stomach giving out on her was almost a relief after the crawling anxiety of being on the cloud city. Yanagi shut her eyes entirely just before they hit the ground, and she started awake, quickly. Her hands were shaking, but the sound of the hydraulics pumping was enough to calm her heavy breathing.

"You’re back early." said Akaya, looking a little bored, from where he leant against the table. Still, it couldn’t have been very long since the PASIV had been started, he’d probably just settled against the table. 

"Mmm. said Sanada, as he adjusted his IV cord, but didn’t remove it. Yanagi did the same, and only sat up in her chair a little.

"So how do you create the world that you want when dreamsharing, if your subconscious will protest to it?" asked Yanagi, as she tilted her head to the right. She could almost feel the broken neck she’d gotten from the fall. It was a bizarre sensation, and she could see how it would be unpleasant for more violent forms of death.

"That’s where architecture comes into play. You have to create the entire dreamworld and all of the possible settings and available things necessary for this trip before you enter the dream. Planning is crucial for all methods of extraction." Sanada said, with a nod. "I’ll be working closely with you on that, details are my forte."

Yanagi nodded, carefully, and Sanada gave her a serious look. “Ready to go back in? This time, I will be the dreamer and I’ll show you some common paradoxes that extractors find useful, in order to make the dream setting work out to their advantage.” he said, calmly, as he nodded towards Akaya.

Yanagi wasn’t quite sure if she was ready, but hesitating wasn’t an option anymore. She would assimilate and sort out all of this information when she returned back home. Now, she just had to worry about learning it accurately.

(x)

The text arrived at Yanagi’s phone a couple of days after she had signed the contract with Yukimura and had memorized a few of the common paradoxes used in dreams, and how they benefited extractors. There had been no written manual as to how dreams worked, which meant that Yanagi was very much reliant upon what she was told and what questions she thought to ask. She took to carrying around a small, locked notebook, like one of these secret journals given to young children, where she jotted down, questions, notes or particular sketches for worlds where gravity or other laws of physics didn’t apply.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

It was in the library, when her phone buzzed suddenly, after a few days with almost no contact. Regretfully abandoning her friends for the new ‘internship’ she was now working, Yanagi had headed outside, not checking the text until she was well away from the Sorbonne, just to be completely sure. As Sanada’s lessons had taught her, there was never being too careful, not when you had targets who recognized the very carpet of their room, or the exact designs of their houses. 

_Bring something precious and small with you_ : was the only instruction in the text, and Yanagi mused at how cryptic a text it was. Nobody else reading her texts would be able to understand for what purpose this message was intended. It could have been anything from a hostage situation, to a lover’s email. Smart.

It took her half an hour to walk over to the warehouse, and by the time she reached the imposing building by the wharf, she mused that it would be more efficient to buy a bike from somewhere. Taking a bus would mean she would be too easy to trace and she would have to be reliant on the timings of the bus driver. And it wasn’t optimal to continue walking here, not when it was of such distance compared to her usual aboding.

"Hello?" called Yanagi, as she walked into the darkened warehouse, staring towards the large covered items that scattered the room. What were those? They looked new. 76.5% that they were something related to the extraction ahead of them, but there were other possibilities too. She stepped forward to pull the cloth off one, and stared softly at the large chunks of wood, pvc piping and plaster underneath. Not something dangerous. not yet, anyway, but what was it for?

"Oh, you’re here." said the couch. It took a moment for Yanagi to realize that the couch wasn’t speaking to her, and that it was instead the teenager being engulfed by the squishy leather, addressing her instead. "Hi."

"Would you like a hand up?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at him, as she stopped in front of Akaya. His curls were perhaps the only thing visible from above the couch, but from this side, it was obvious to tell who the speaker was.

"No!" said the teenager hotly, as he attempted to push himself upwards, and only managed to get himself further sunk in the leather. After a minute of futile struggling, the teen sighed and slumped back down, giving up his struggle. "Maybe." he said, sulkily, refusing to meet her gaze.

Suppressing a smirk, Yanagi placed her bag down neatly, and pulled, hard, managing to almost catapult him up and off the couch. He almost collided with her face and Yanagi stepped back quickly, to avoid breaking her nose on his sharp, well-cut chin. The teen grinned, with little remorse.

"Heh. You’ve got good reflexes, Yukimura-senpai’ll definitely like you." Akaya said, cheerily.

"Hmm, to be able to deflect the projections?" asked Yanagi, as she carefully took a seat on one of the lounge stretchers, unwilling to take the risk of being swallowed alive by the leather. Being able to fight projections would be a key skill inside the dream world and if she had a headstart, that was for the better. 

"Well, that too. But you know, sometimes this job gets dangerous in real life too." said Akaya, with a shrug, as he loped over to the boxes on the side of the warehouse. "There was this one time in like Ohio where we had this huge car chase across the deserts and we almost got shot like five times."

Yanagi smiled blandly, until the statement caught up with her. “….there are real life dangers. And you almost got shot.”

Akaya nodded, as he opened a box. “Yeap. But those are easier to deal with than the ones in the mind. The world is big enough to run around in. And we can make sure as little trouble gets to you as possible, especially if you know the right people in the right places. But dream problems are tougher to get over.” With that, Akaya pulled out a large drill, which was larger than his head and grinned at her.

Yanagi ground her teeth together, tightly to try and hide her apprehension, but she was sure that she must have looked paler. “If your solution to real life problems is a drill, there is a 2.3% of staying hidden from police attention.”

Akaya looked at the drill, back at her again, looking a little nonplussed, before it seemed to hit him and he grinned and laughed. “No, no!” he said, shaking his head and the drill around. Yanagi didn’t feel all too reassured. “This is for the dream related problems. I dunno whether the old man or Yukimura-senpai mentioned it, but dreams are hella disorienting when you can control them or other people can control them. And since dream time passes faster than real life time, you can forget that you were ever anywhere else but inside the dream. That’s when you start believing the dream is real life.”

Yanagi nodded, grimly. The soldiers came to mind here. “Sanada mentioned it.” she said, quietly.

"Yeah, well, in order to counteract that, so you can always be sure about whether you’re awake or not, most extractors like to have something called a totem." Akaya explained, as he set the drill down on the table, and picked up some other cogs and bolts from the box. "Something unique to them, and something that only they know about, exactly. One of my senpai, his name’s Niou, he has this one dart, that flies off curve when thrown. But only he knows how off-balance it always is. So he can tell whether he’s in someone else’s dream."

Yanagi paused as she thought that over. There was a rather glaring error in that line of thought. “But if you know what the totem is like, can you not fool yourself?”

Akaya smiled sadly. “Yeah. You can. And that’s like a real big problem. But that’s not really fixable. Totems help you know when someone else is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. If you’re pulling the wool over your eyes, you’re too far gone.” he shrugged, as he placed a small screwdriver on the table. “You bring something unique to you?”

Yanagi nodded, but didn’t hand it over to him. “What do you all use?” she asked.

"Think those two use their wedding rings." said Akaya, with a shrug. Yanagi frowned. Sanada’s ring had been glinting on his hand whenever she had seen him, but she hadn’t yet seen Yukimura with a wedding ring. It was probably something else, but Akaya wasn’t lying about Yukimura’s totem, not from the set of his shoulders and the ease of his breathing. He probably just didn’t know about what Yukimura used.

"And you?" she asked.

Akaya laughed, dryly. “Don’t need one.” he said, shortly, looking quite unwilling to explain any further. “Come on, let’s make you one, what did you bring?”

Yanagi merely raised an eyebrow, and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you help me make the totem, wouldn’t that mean you know how it will behave?” she asked, dryly. “I’ll make it myself, don’t worry about that. Since you have warned me about it’s dangers.”

Akaya grinned, sheepishly. “Right. Forgot. Stupid of me.” he said, placing his hands down in the mess he’d just made, looking a little chagrined. His curls almost drooped and his fingers curled together into shaking fists. Yanagi softened a little and stepped forward.

"I have an idea for a layout, but I rather think it needs a 3D layout for me to fully be able to plan the route for the target properly. Would you aid me in creating it?" she asked, as she rolled up her sleeves and stepped forward. Akaya’s head whipped around and he grinned, with a devilish intensity. It didn’t bode too well, but it was better than seeing him look so down.

"Totally! Let’s do it, Yanagi-senpai!" he said, as he revved up the power tool. Yanagi, despite the blatant disrespect for workplace safety, couldn’t help but a smile a little at that.


End file.
